


lightning and thunder

by afrocurl



Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Erik has Feelings, F/M, Holocaust, M/M, Minor Character Death, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 19:53:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1720589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afrocurl/pseuds/afrocurl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Never had Erik expected to bond with someone else again - to feel the lightning strike - and clearly not with Charles - who had only heard thunderous roars.</p><p>Life had a funny way of working itself out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lightning and thunder

**Author's Note:**

> Based off [this prompt](http://futurepast-kink.dreamwidth.org/2013/07/22/round1.html?thread=29241#cmt29241), and heavily influenced ideas of the soul bond go to **Cesare** and **Helens78** , who have done so much with soul bonds that my brain accepts those as gospel.
> 
> Any remaining errors are my own, as my bets have been through this so many times.

When Magda walked past him, he felt like he'd been hit by a lightning strike - he felt a jolt so powerful and awe-inspiring that he couldn't help but notice her. He had no idea of how these things worked - he'd never had an opportunity to discuss bonding with his parents in the ghetto, or even before then. All he knew was that there was something between him and this woman, something he'd never known before.

Electric as that pull between them was, it was also in a place that was _wrong_ for such things: a place in which the two of them were trapped in adjacent parts of a sprawling concentration camp, a place where death ruled. Somehow, though, they found a way when the camps were liberated.

Staying together was their only option, and it was as if their connection would never break. The two of them together were stronger and more passionate than they could ever be if they were separated.

Given everything in his life until then, Erik always expected the worst. But the years had been kind to him and to Magda, though not as much as he would have liked.

First they had a daughter - but they lost her too soon, to a flu that swept the town where they had reluctantly settled. They rallied, however, recovering to try again. This time it was Magda who paid the price, who died just after their twins were born.

Looking at the helpless twins hurt him more than anything - more than even the sensation of his bond and Magda's slowly withering away - and before he could think better of it and himself he left.

Escape was all he could think of in that moment. It was all he knew how to do.

-

He ran for so long that he almost forgot who he was. He was only a man's broken toy, a monster, who was looking for the people who had broken him.

Rarely did he recall his old life - the quiet one with Magda and then their children - because he had no use for trivial bonds and sentimentality when another mission required more from him.

Scores of men had died because of what they had helped Erik become, and scores more still would.

Only everything changed on him again just as he drew close to his final goal, to Schmidt only meters away.

Nearly dead from finishing his final job, a man spoke to him. Somehow.

It wasn't a lightning strike, but it felt close enough.

-

That man - Charles - the one who thundered into his mind and into his heart, wasn't Magda. He would never be Magda (obvious differences aside), but that didn't mean that Charles wasn't _different_. 

For the first time, Erik found himself facing an equal - someone who challenged him, someone who demanded he be better - and the thunder of their first meeting rolled and roared into the distance.

They clashed and clanged into each other, night in and night out, tongues, lips, hips. Boundless passion that made the world seem calm around him.

Nothing like Magda, but obviously their relationship was just as powerful. Just as fast to appear and slow to fade.

-

The thunder fell silent as Charles said that he and Erik had never wanted the same thing. 

It made sense that they would never be as fast and bright as he and Magda, though it didn't hurt any less to hear Charles' broken words.

_I'm sorry my friend, but we do not._

Thunder eventually fades into silence, as everything must. Relationships end.

Claps of rage and brutal strength followed him everywhere.

Nothing like peace. But he never believed in it.

-

Erik never thought himself a hero - especially after Cuba's mixed results - but the concrete jail cell that awaited him for what he didn't do to President Kennedy, that was something else.

Time slowed, almost became molasses in winter, as all he was left with were his thoughts, his cot, and his meager food.

His mind overtook everything else - running old missions through his head, running old memories of everything else - and it gave him time to think on his relationships.

The ache from Magda never died - it never would, he assumed - but it was a dull throb in his heart. He missed his children, when his mind recalled their birthdays, or the small and careful looks he saw from each of them before he left them. Those all reminded him of sweetness born from pain. He understood pain, and he understood moments of joy.

Charles' rejection - even without the bond - was another ache altogether. That rejection stung, like hundreds of bees attacking flesh, the pricks still sending pain well after each stinger had been removed. 

He sat with both hurts, day after day, month after month, year after year.

Always thinking of what he missed.

-

A boy with shocking white hair - not unlike his son's, in the few memories he still had - shattered the glass to his cell and broke him free.

Freedom was once again his.

Only after evading a score of guards did Erik think of what else was ahead. 

He didn't expect to feel a strike of lightning matching a strong cross-jab to his face. Nor did he expect to see Charles standing after the punch.

"Charles?" he said, because his mind had too many items to process - another bond, Charles, a son who didn't know it - and everything went dark.

-

Hank and that damned fool who had rejected them years ago eyed him all the way out of the Pentagon and onto a plane. Of course Charles had a plane still. If not the Blackbird, something else. 

The lightning strike had yet to abate, had yet to disappear, but Erik had no answer for why or how. Crackling energy followed him to the plane and it felt almost too much to be surrounded by metal and to have that feeling surround him too; twinned powers doing their best to make him new, leave him wholly different.

It mustn't be Charles. For it hadn't happened years before.

What had changed, aside from Charles' mobility?

_The treatment for my spine affects my DNA._

It was a simple enough answer: Charles’ powers hindered what strike could have befallen them eleven years ago; it kept them close, to be sure, but not wrapped around each other as if they were one mind, one body, one spirit.

"Do you feel different now? Do you know what this is between us?" Erik asked, because for once he knew and that alone was terrifying. No one had ever said that someone could bond twice; it had never happened to anyone Erik had known. Yet, now, he was proof in the affirmative.

"I don't know what you mean, Erik. I feel nothing."

"You feel nothing? How can you? We've--" he stopped, unable to finish the thought. Magda's careful smile through the barbed wire returned, and looking across at Charles now, none of what happened felt the same.

"We've bonded, you and I. You must know it happens." He tried for patience, for peace, for a measure of cool, and he failed.

"I know nothing of the sort, Erik. Nothing of the sort."

Erik let this conversation drop, and moved around the cabin - restless energy overtaking him. Energy rippled through him, unused and unsure of its final destination.

He had more than one thing to prove to Charles now.

Not only would they stop Mystique from killing Trask.

Erik would convince Charles that there was a bond between them that would only be broken by one thing: death.

Certainly that would change so much about who each of them had become. But certainly that was worth his time.

He couldn't see a future without Charles at his side and he'd do anything to prove it.

-

One chess game settled some of Erik’s nerves about what he had with Charles, but it did nothing to settle the tension that he could see in Charles’ face.

Eleven years had not been kind to either of them, but Erik had little to do outside of thinking while in prison for most of it. Charles, conversely, had been dealt so many blows that Erik thought them almost equals when it came to previous trauma. 

Erik had the Holocaust; Charles had Vietnam that destroyed his vision.

What an odd match they made: broken toys still looking for cobblers to mend.

Charles said little of what had ruined him, though Logan had done a fair amount before. But in what Charles didn’t say, Erik saw the pain: the raw breaking skin that could kill if left open too long.

Erik thought now they were more alike than before. He didn’t share that with Charles, though, who looked as if the world were ending.

-

The energy and spark still followed him. Charles looked as nonplussed about the bond as he had on the plane, but all of that changed as soon as they strode into Trask’s meeting at the treaty’s location.

A military man at Trask’s side attacked Mystique as soon as she held a gun towards Trask. 

Erik felt the world crackle and sizzle, as if more and more the bond’s pull drew him closer to Charles. He stood still as Charles talked to Raven, tried to reason with her.

_We’ve come for you. Erik and I. Together._

It gave Erik hope - blooming in his chest - and a hope that had long since disappeared. If Charles had mentioned that they had come together, they had to mean something to each other now. Charles had said nothing, but Erik knew how much pain he had caused, how quickly he had broken Charles’ _joie de vivre_. He stood silently, hoping that Charles’ words would be enough.

“I’ve been on my own for ten years, Erik. I know what I have to do,” she said defiantly as they both tried to keep her from shooting the gun at Trask. She didn’t let the gun move and then Erik knew that they were one moment away from ruining their future.

“But your actions have larger consequences.” He made himself as cool and collected as he could when they were on the precipice of unknown disaster, even as the lightning kept humming through him. “I have lived far too long without knowing that what I had done before would affect me now; I have a son who broke me out of jail, who I abandoned far too young. Just as I found I had two soulmates in this world, strange as that sounds.”

He let silence echo through the room, uncaring if the world knew of what he said. Bonds were rare, and if he could convince Mystique to stop and set themselves on a course that would allow he and Charles to be together, then he would.

“You never asked me about killing before, and I never felt the need to tell you this: death only solves one problem at a time. All those Nazis - Schmidt, too - only gave me satisfaction for the death of my mother, my family, my people. It didn’t stop hatred or prejudice. You see that now. One more shot against a man like Trask won’t stop everyone from being scared. It never will.”

Charles looked up from where he had been near to Mystique, his eyes wet with tears. He looked towards Erik as if everything had changed.

“You found peace?” Charles asked, barely louder than a whisper, even as the room rippled with the residual chaos. Hank and Logan were busy - subduing Trask and the military officer he hoped - but Erik couldn’t say for certain. His only focus was Charles. Out of the corner of his eyes he vaguely saw that Mystique had risen to a wary crouch on the table, watching them.

“Perhaps. But you. I found you again. I never thought I would. I know you think that my bond story is shite, but it’s true. You’re a scientist, you must have heard of bonds before.”

Charles gave no reply, but stood to look at Erik face to face. “I don’t want to believe.”

“You can’t lose all hope, Charles,” Logan interrupted, and if not for the sentiment of the statement, Erik would have glared.

“I don’t know what to believe now,” Charles said.

“Then let’s try together. Let me explain.”

Erik leaned forward and gently kissed Charles’ forehead. The lightning crackled one last time, and after Erik moved away, Charles looked at him. All around him, Erik felt the pull of the bond, felt the way that the world reoriented itself like when he found Magda. 

“I felt that.”

Erik smiled. It was a start. Much better than he had imagined twenty-four hours ago.

“Do you believe now?” he asked softly. In reply, Charles’ lips pressed against Erik’s lips. That was all the answer that Erik needed. 

-

Together, Charles and Erik made their way out of the Royal the way they’d come in, amidst a crowd of fleeing, frantic workers, while Logan and Hank behind them directed a stolen service cart hiding the bound bodies of Trask and his aide within. Denied her kill, Mystique had gone her own way, confused and angry. If both men were to be spared, Erik would be sure that they would never hurt mutants again. Maybe both could be dropped off in his former cell.

Maybe Charles would let everyone in their team destroy Trask’s research to be sure.

But whatever they did, it would always be together.


End file.
